twaddle

Etymology

An alteration of twattle (1556), of unknown origin.^[1][2]

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈtwɒdəl/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈtwɑdəl/

• Audio (GA)

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ædəl
• Hyphenation: twad‧dle

Noun

twaddle (countable and uncountable, plural twaddles)

1. (uncountable) Empty or silly idle talk or writing; nonsense, rubbish. [from 1782.]
   • 1886, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Science of Deduction”, in A Study in Scarlet (Beeton's Christmas Annual; 28th season), London; New York, N.Y.: Ward Lock & Co., November 1887, OCLC 15800088; republished as A Study in Scarlet. A Detective Story, new edition, London: Ward, Lock, Bowden, and Co., 1892, OCLC 23246292, page 28:

     "What ineffable twaddle!" I cried, slapping the magazine down on the table; "I never read such rubbish in my life."

   • 1918 July, Katherine Mansfield, chapter 12, in Prelude, Richmond, London: Printed by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press, OCLC 2495144; republished in Bliss and Other Stories, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A. Knopf, 1921, OCLC 946809134, page 66:

     It was her other self who had written that letter. It not only bored, it rather disgusted her real self. "Flippant and silly," said her real self. Yet she knew that she'd send it and she'd always write that kind of twaddle to Nan Pym.

2. (countable) One who twaddles; a twaddler.

Verb

twaddle (third-person singular simple present twaddles, present participle twaddling, simple past and past participle twaddled)

1. To talk or write nonsense; to prattle.
   • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter 12, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: Bobbs-Merrill Company, OCLC 656907741, OL 1097634W, page 181:

     To Edward […] he was terrible, nerve-inflaming, poisonously asphyxiating. He sat rocking himself in the late Mr. Churchill's swing chair, smoking and twaddling.

References

Further reading

• twaddle (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia